The Ghost
by Lady Slytherin of Camelot
Summary: In 1991, an albino Harry was seen and the whispers started. After a hell of a first year, he comes across Riddle's diary. In 1939, Tom talks to a boy from the future and in 1953, Voldemort starts a new plan: Make someone travel in time through a diary. Might or might not be slash.


**~Harry Potter is not mine~**

**Beated by:** Marwana.

Thank you for giving this a try. I want everyone to know that all information I gained about albinism comes from wikipedia. If you can help me, or know a website that can, please tell me.

My other story, Embers of Dusk, is on a **HIATUS** from now on.

CHAPTER 1

WHITE

A freak.

Harry knew he was a freak. That was what his relatives claimed, at least.

Petunia wasn't so bad, truth be told. She just didn't like how different he was. Not only because he had magic – but because he was also an albino. For as long as Harry could remember, his aunt dyed his hair. Blond looked good along his pale skin, but it made him look like Petunia, and she didn't want anyone in the neighborhood to think that Harry was her son. He was a freak, she insisted, just like his mother had been. At least, she said, her sister had color, when his hair kept turning back white.

She was so beautiful, Harry thought when he found a photograph of his mother which had been hidden. His eyes didn't help. Having such a terrible vision didn't help at all, not having glasses was even worse, but Petunia wouldn't take him anywhere, much less someone where he would have his eyes examined by a professional, costing her a lot of money and the shame of having a relative with such a problem like his, so he took the photograph to one of his teachers and begged him to describe his mother. _Beautiful_, he repeated to himself. Not like him. Beautiful. _Colorful_.

A ghost, mocked Dudley. He enjoyed Harry's terrible vision more than anyone. Beating someone who most of times couldn't see it coming was just so funny in his opinion, funny enough for Harry become his only target. Everyone in the streets could see a pale boy running from a fat one back from school. School was the only place Harry was allowed to go, since his relatives soon found out that he got burned very easily.

At least Vernon didn't beat him as much as the boy was afraid he would – soon his uncle learned that anyone could see the blood against Harry's white skin. Too obvious, Vernon had yelled the last time his belt struck against Harry. He was only starved after that. A starving ghost, thought Harry bitterly as he rubbed against the red skin forming from the belt.

He liked to think that magical people would see it different. He expected that he would be considered special just like Hagrid had said he would. They wouldn't stop liking him because he was an albino, would they? Would they like him at all?

The first thing Hagrid had done was to buy him magical lenses, the best ones sold across the world. Harry picked up a bright green, the same one he thought his mother's eyes were, before the accident. _Not an accident_, he thought as he put his lenses on for the first time, hoping it would cover his pale green, sometimes pinkish, eyes. _They were murdered._

He could see much better after that. Well, much better than _he_ used to. It wasn't terrible anymore, just bad. Light didn't bother him so much. Now he could read without braille. The tiny letters were new to him, but during the summer he forced himself to ignore his blurry vision and memorize each one of the letters. By the end of August he could read basic texts from his school books out loud to Hedwig. Hedwig was as white as him, yet her sight seemed to be perfect. Harry envied her.

"Harry Potter" called McGonagall, bringing his attention back to the Great Hall.

The whispers started. First, because he was the boy who lived. Everyone wanted to see what he looked like. Beautiful and brave and the perfect Gryffindor, they thought, until Harry walked to the Sorting Hat. He was seen, and the whispers changed. An albino. They couldn't believe it.

His eyes might be bad, but his hearing was great, and he could hear each one of them whispering their opinions. Someone behind him seemed fascinated. The others were only disappointed. What if their hero couldn't even see the spells coming his way? Could he be THE boy who lived? Surely there had been a mistake.

The Sorting Hat didn't think so.

"Gryffindor!" it shouted, but when while Harry walked to the Gryffindor table, no one clapped. They were too busy with staring. The teachers clapped, at least, followed by the kinder students. Enough. Harry sat down, reading a book. He was getting better at it. Potions would be cool to learn.

Hermione Granger was the first to approach him, and one of the only ones. Instead of the others, she didn't want to befriend the boy-who-lived: She wanted further information on albinos. Harry was polite to her, but that was all. He was finding out that asking for a true friend was too much.

"Please, Harry, tell me about your eyes" she had begged one day. "Is it true they're red?"

He had raised a white eyebrow in return and took one of his lenses off. "You can read it anywhere that most albinos' eyes are usually blue. Mine are green, though, as you can see. There's some pink behind it, but not red. It's a myth. If you want to see red eyes, a rabbit would suit your purpose. Oh, don't forget the Transfiguration homework."

His excellent class work didn't help. Since he had no friends to spend time with, he studied, studied until his eyes couldn't stay open anymore. Students seemed to hate him for that. Harry spent all his free time in the Library. Madame Pince taught him some useful spells, like the one that made the words bigger, making his reading much easier. He wasn't mocked there, since no one was allowed to speak.

Harry was in the Library during the Halloween feast. He was resting when his trained ears caught the sound of steps, lots of steps together running, and whispers. He hated whispers, yet that time, he leaned closer to the door to hear better: They were scared.

"Stay here, Harry" ordered Pince. He nodded, a streak of white hair covering his eyes. "I'll check out what this fuss is about." Soon she returned. "A troll! Can you believe it, Harry? A troll! Not near my books!" She was gone before Harry realized it.

The footsteps he heard next were heavier and slower. The floor shook every time the troll took one step. Harry hid himself against a shelf and waited, imagining the troll. Big an ugly, probably. It stank. Everyone who was near one could smell it.

Someone opened the door. Harry waited some more, wanting to make sure it was a human being. The slow curses muttered showed so.

"It went to the right" the boy informed the teacher. With that hair, Snape was easy to recognize. "Just a moment ago. Hurry and you might catch it. I heard their head is the weakest spot."

Snape managed to catch the troll. Afterwards, he thanked Harry for his help and briefly talked about Potions, eulogizing Harry's performance. The boy asked a question, and another, and another. Noticing the boy's interest, Snape thought about the boy's knowledge of ingredients, smelling and feeling them better than others, and invited him for private lessons.

"There are excellent healing potions" the teacher said on their first lesson. "Soon we will start one that will help you with your sight. For now, we will stick with a Calming Draught. Open your book, Potter. I see you've taken your own notes. Good. This one is wrong, though. It's better if you cut. The lesser contact, the better. Crushing it involves too much contact."

They met every week and worked on different potions. Better than that, they talked. Sometimes Harry would turn up with a subject. Sometimes, Snape did. By Christmas, when Harry had studied all the potions first years would learn plus healing potions, they brew together the Eye Healing Potion.

"The world is so beautiful" sighed Harry after he drank it. There was no blurry object. His eyes were full of tears, but he blinked them away. Snape smiled proudly at him. "Too bad it only lasts 12 hours. Why so little time, professor? Why not forever?"

"The best things in the world last little, Harry" the Potion Master seemed lost in memories.

He examined his hands and saw his reflection on a mirror Snape conjured. His hair was fussier than normal, white as snow, going everywhere. When Harry removed his lenses, his eyes were still green. Not the pinkish green they were before, but a bright one that sparkled of life.

"You have your mother's eyes" confessed Snape to him. He twisted his wand; suddenly, Harry's hair was red. "You would look like this, I think, if it weren't for your father."

The boy held his breath. "My father, sir? And my mother? Did you know them?"

"This is a story for another time. All I can say is that you have your mother's eyes, and her heart. I saw you when you were a baby, shortly after your parents' death. You weren't an albino then. You had these eyes, and your father's hair. Raven black hair."

After showing him how he would look like if it weren't for his albinism, that became the main subject of their talks while brewing.

When Harry wasn't brewing, he was reading more about his disease. Magical albinos were rare. When born in an old family, their memories were wiped away and the victim would be thrown into the muggle world. If muggle born, the wizard or witch wouldn't be accepted in the magical world. He or she wouldn't be only muggle born, they would also have a bad sight and bad tolerance to light. Harry couldn't decide which case was worst.

With his exams approaching, his classes with Snape stopped. Their last one had been only on theories about why he had suddenly lost all his color. The Potions master had an interesting idea: Maybe Harry hadn't been a victim of the Avada Kedavra and survived, at all. Maybe part of him had died. Enzymes, the boy completed excited, remembering the words from one of his books. Tyrosinase enzymes. They decided to keep their theory to themselves. It would be no good if everyone found out that part of the boy who lived hadn't lived.

"Harry, I need your help" claimed Hermione behind him. Her bossy voice could be recognized anywhere. The boy stopped and glanced at her. That was different. It was always everyone asking Hermione for help. He even had done that once or twice, when he couldn't understand the Latin pronunciation of some spells. "Please."

He closed his book. "I'm sorry, Hermione, I'd love to help, but I'm meeting Hagrid in a few minutes."

Hermione smiled fondly at the mention of the half giant. "Yes, he's lovely, isn't he? Taught me a few things about beasts as long as I kept my mouth shut." It was too late when she realized her mistake. "Please Harry, don't ask. I promised him."

"I know about Norbert, Hermione. His egg felt so warm against my skin, the scales on it… I even heard it hatching, fed him and so. He seems to like me. I read somewhere that dragons don't feel so frightened when they are around albinos, because they can see me very well. There's absolutely no chance of me attacking him before he reacts."

"No, wait, just tell me something, Flamel, have you heard this name before?"

Harry was already leaving. "Buy a chocolate frog. If you are lucky, it will have all the answers you need."

It was him who had brewn the potion that made Snape's bite scars disappear. Demanding an explanation, the professor confessed about Fluffy, and how he thought Quirrell was behind it. Harry kept a close eye at Quirrell after that, trying to find something suspicious. Sometimes, Harry thought he could hear words being said from the back of his teacher's head.

He went to the third floor after that, of course. Every weekend, to check if no one was in there, but he didn't enter. He could be a Gryffindor, but above all he was wise. It was already May when he felt that something was different. The dog (those barks could only be a dog's) was weird. Calm. Not barking. The door didn't let a sound out, but when Harry opened it with an Alohomora, he could see the three headed dog. If it hadn't been for his father's invisibility cloak (a Christmas gift) he would have been caught immediately.

"Shhh" said Harry, trying to think of a hummed a random song. Realizing that it was in fact Moonlight Sonata, he hummed the best he could, when he saw that it was making the dog sleepy. "Yeah, good dog. Now sleep."

He went down the trapdoor and fell on something that squeezed him. Devil's Snare. "Lumos!" he whispered before the plant squeezed him to death. It worked.

The flying keys were different. Besides from the flying classes, he had never flown before. His vision wouldn't allow it, no matter how hard he tried to see the snitch or the other balls. He would probably just end up hitting something. Harry loved flying, though, in open field, where nothing would be in his way. The keys, though…

"The lock is golden" said someone behind him. Dumbledore. When their eyes met, both smiled. They hadn't had the opportunity to talk much, yet they were friendly to each other. "There's only one golden key. Go there and catch it, Harry."

He did was he was told.

Ten minutes later, he had the key. By then he was sweating and about to beg for a cup of water.

"What are you doing here, sir?" he asked, opening the door.

Dumbledore's eyes were sparkling. "I'm about to finish the tasks that lead to the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry. Curious, are you? Let's see if you can go through the next task."

Chess was one of his guilty pleasures, so it was done soon. Harry had managed to keep most of his 'army' alive by the end of the game, while the other team lost almost all of theirs. He was about to cross another door when a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Not this one" explained Dumbledore. Harry could smell why. "Too dangerous, but I think I can teach you a quick trick here. Look" he opened the door. "Incarcerous!"

The troll was bind by ropes immediately.

"Next task, Harry, I think you'll enjoy this one." The old wizard was giggling to himself.

Potions! The Gryffindor ran towards them, only glancing at the instructions. He smelled the potions one by one. "These are poison. This is something that can make you walk through fire, and here's the right one. Before that, headmaster, would you like some wine?"

Dumbledore laughed loudly. "I'd love to, my boy, but later. I have to set a trap next door, come with me, you can tell me what you think of it."

Truth to be said, Dumbledore pitied Harry. He remembered how everyone mocked his sister when they realized she didn't have magic anymore, only impulsive magic that ended up killing their mother. Harry managed to be so calm, even with no one being his friend, he was the perfect boy who lived.

"Professor, honestly, you basically told everyone that there was something hidden here. If what professor Snape thinks is right, soon or later Voldemort will come here looking for the stone. Hide it somewhere, make the next room a trap, a real one, one that a first year can't go through."

Time for the truth, then.

"I hid it this way, easily, so you could go through it. Show the world that you can save them just like you saved them years ago. Survive, Harry. Each time you survive, you show them how strong you are."

Harry was shaking his head. "Part of me died that night, headmaster. I guess you know what."

"Color isn't _that_ important, my boy. You could have lost so much more."

"My parents are dead, sir." There were tears in the boy's eyes, and Dumbledore could see how he was trying to control his anger. "My relatives hate me. No one likes me here. My vision is terrible, I can barely go out in the sun, and my eyes turn fucking pink sometimes. Oh, and don't forget, my hair is white. I'm entirely white. I'm a living ghost, headmaster."

Dumbledore sighed and removed something out of his pockets. A red stone that glowed with life.

"Is it..."

"Yes. The Elixir of Life might be of use."

Harry shook his head again. "I don't… I don't want your mercy, headmaster. I don't want to live more than I have to. Thank you, but no. If I were you, I'd destroy the stone. Make sure Voldemort doesn't return through it."

When he looked at Dumbledore, the old wizard was smiling proudly at him. "That's it, my boy. Every life should end when it should end. No extending terms. Come, come here."

He followed Dumbledore.

There was a mirror, a huge mirror in the center of the room. When Harry saw his reflection, he gasped.

"What do you see, Harry? What's your heart's desire?"

"Love" answered the boy, touching the glass. "I see a portrait of my family, full of color and love."

He started at his parents for a long time, until Dumbledore put a hand on his shoulder. "It's time to hide."

Harry waited. When he was bored, he waited some more. Quirrell should come there soon. Dumbledore was waiting there as well, but he made sure to inform the staff that he was leaving for London. They were staring each other when Harry heard the door open.

"Welcome!" he greeted. "I thought you'd never come!"

"What's the meaning of this?" asked Quirrell, frowning. "What are you doing here, boy?"

Harry smirked. "Waiting for you."

Quick as a snake, he was on his Defense Against Dark Arts teacher, touching him everywhere he could, burning him. Quirrell was screaming in pain, and soon, Harry joined him. His head seemed about to explode, but he kept going, kept touching the teacher, putting his pale hands against Quirrell's face.

Soon the teacher stopped moving.

"That's it?" he asked.

Dumbledore stepped out of the shadows. He had braided his beard. "Yes, that's it. Now we can tell the world how brave you were."

"But… I didn't do it, sir. You helped me. I wouldn't have gotten past the troll."

"So what? The press creates some things and hides others. Let everyone believe I was in London, shall we? You deserve some credit. Now, let's go. I think I'll accept that wine offer of yours, Harry."

Vacations came quickly. Everyone wanted to hear more about what had happened, but the Gryffindor kept his mouth shut. They were only interested in the story, not in him. When the exams were over and he went to his relatives house again, he was locked in his bedroom. That night, he cried himself to sleep.

"Let me out or I'll scream!" threatened Harry, slamming his fist against the door. "Did I mention that I killed a teacher with my bare hands? I will do the same to you if you don't let me out!"

It worked.

Summer was easier after that. As long as he kept the house clean, he was left alone. Dudley was too scared of him to mock him, even with Harry developing the habit of jumping in front of his cousin shouting "BOO" to scare him.

The warning came with the Masons. The Dursleys happily showed Harry to them when they visited the family in order to set a deal with Grummings, the company Vernon worked at, so the couple could see how lovely it was of the Dursleys to take care of an albino child that wasn't theirs. Harry thought he had seen bright green eyes spying on him, but dismissed it considering just light.

When Hagrid came to take him to the Diagon Alley to buy everything for his second year, he went happily after him. He liked the half giant, maybe because Hagrid had confessed that no one wanted to be his friend either when he was a student.

Gilderoy Lockhart was inside Flourish and Blotts, in the center of dozens of witches, so Harry stepped away and went to buy potion ingredients. When he was finally entering the bookstore, a redhead family was leaving. A little girl looked at him, becoming paler and paler, until it looked like she was about to faint.

"Hello."

"Harry Potter" squeaked the girl. "Ron, you were right, he's so ugly, he's a monster!"

Harry smiled kindly. "My cousin likes to call me ghost. What do you have there? A diary?"

The redheaded girl glanced at the books she had and frowned. "That isn't mine!"

Ron Weasley took the diary out the bag they were using to hold all the books and spat: "Keep it if you want, _ghost_, but stay away from my family."

When he was gone, Harry took the diary from the ground and examined it. It looked old, very old. Fifty years old, maybe? Used, but the Gryffindor could bet the words would be erased by now.

Harry bought a feather, ink and found a place to sit, to write: _My life is a living hell._ The words faded away until disappearing. He frowned and wrote, holding his breath:

_Hello?_

_Hello. So you said your life is a living hell? Tell me more about it._

**English is not my first language and my notes aren't betaed, so forgive me for any mistakes: **

**I know it's rushed, I just wanted to make the time travel stuff as quickly as possible. I plan on making it happening on chapter 3. Please take a minute of your time to tell me what you think of this. For the first time, I'm writing something along with reviews, and not ahead of them. **

**Again, reviews are more than welcome! **


End file.
